Obama Berlin'de. 2008 konuşmasını anımsatmış. Aklıma Başkan Clinton'ın 1998 Berlin konuşmasının tam metninin, bilhassa Türkiye ile ilgili kısımlarının, görsel medyada verilmediği, üstelik büyük ve güvenilir Alman basınında ertesi gün nasıl çıkarıldığı geldi. Dün, Obama Berlin'de konuşurken habertürk, cnn türkiye, ntv gibi Türkiye'nin önde gelen haber kanallarını açtım. Hiçbirinde bu konuşma canlı olarak verilmedi. O kadar çok önemli haber olmalı ki, bizim tv kanalları Obama'nın konuşmasını atlamış olmalılar diye düşündüm, sansür edecek değillerdi ya. Kim bilir, belki de hepsi Osmanlı bankasıydılar ve gerçekten yoktu birbirlerinden farkları.
Obama revisits the promises of 2008 in legacy-minded Berlin speech
By Olivier Knox and Marc Young | The Ticket – 14 hrs ago
In 2008, some 200,000 people packed the streets near this city’s Victory Column and listened raptly to candidate Barack Obama promise to lead a different America on the chaotic global stage – one that would embrace action to fight climate change, shutter the Guantanamo Bay prison for suspected extremists, seek to eliminate the world’s nuclear weapons stockpiles and battle poverty. On Wednesday, some 6,000 invited guests filled part of the square on the East side of the city’s Brandenburg Gate to hear President Barack Obama…well, promise action to fight climate change, shutter Guantanamo Bay, work towards eliminating the world’s nuclear stockpiles, and battle poverty. I still have time to fulfill my promises, he seemed to be saying. The ones I haven't kept, they aren’t broken, just deferred. Speaking from behind a forbidding wall of bulletproof glass, Obama quoted President John F. Kennedy’s June 1963 “Ich bin ein Berliner” address and recalled Ronald Reagan’s June 1987 “tear down this wall” speech. He could hardly do otherwise. But the politician he truly channeled was that promise-maker of 2008. And the one who seemed most on his mind was the Obama who will shoulder history’s judgment. “As I’ve said, Angela and I don’t exactly look like previous German and American leaders,” he said of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a near word-for-word reprise of 2008, when he underlined “I know that I don't look like the Americans who've previously spoken in this great city.” But the power of Obama’s biography has dimmed in the shadow of controversy: The prospective first black American president from 2008 is now the first American president to openly acknowledge that he has ordered the assassination of U.S. citizens overseas. (The poster pictured half-way down in this Yahoo News story provides a brutal summary). And the NSA spying scandal weighed down Obama's speech with an unapologetic defense of government surveillance. "Our current programs are bound by the rule of law, and they're focused on threats to our security -- not the communications of ordinary persons. They help confront real dangers, and they keep people safe here in the United States and here in Europe," he insisted. "But we must accept the challenge that all of us in democratic governments face: to listen to the voices who disagree with us; to have an open debate about how we use our powers and how we must constrain them; and to always remember that government exists to serve the power of the individual, and not the other way around." Ahead of the speech, the White House worked to focus reporters on its core proposal: Deep new cuts to America’s nuclear arsenal. Obama delivered, calling for reducing America’s deployed nuclear weapons by up to one third, seeking new talks with Russia for more cuts, and drawing down the short-range nukes Washington and Moscow still have deployed in Europe. “Peace with justice means pursuing the security of a world without nuclear weapons -- no matter how distant that dream may be,” the president declared. (The message in 2008? “This is the moment when we must renew the goal of a world without nuclear weapons.” On this, at least, Obama has scored some important victories, notably Senate ratification of the New START arms control treaty). But Republicans quickly warned they would oppose new cuts, alleging that Russia has been violating its current commitments. As he did last month, Obama vowed to shutter the notorious Guantanamo Bay facility that holds about 170 prisoners -- including some cleared for release but without a clear path home. "Even as we remain vigilant about the threat of terrorism, we must move beyond a mindset of perpetual war. And in America, that means redoubling our efforts to close the prison at Guantanamo," he said. But it was Congress that served notice in early 2009 that it would not go along with that campaign promise. And it's not at all clear that lawmakers will go along with it before he leaves office in 2017. And it was Congress -- the Senate, specifically -- that blocked Obama's push for an ambitious cap-and-trade mechanism to battle global warming. Obama warned Wednesday that climate change "is the global threat of our time" and implored the world to "get to work" on slowing or reversing it "before it is too late." He praised Germany and Europe, which he said have led on the issue, and defended the more modest steps his administration has taken. "We know we have to do more -- and we will do more," he said. (The 2008 promise? "This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands. Let us resolve that all nations - including my own - will act with the same seriousness of purpose as has your nation, and reduce the carbon we send into our atmosphere.") Five years ago, Obama argued that "this is the moment when we must give hope to those left behind in a globalized world," saying it was time to "extend our hand to the people in the forgotten corners of this world who yearn for lives marked by dignity and opportunity; by security and justice" and work to "banish the scourge of AIDS in our time." He re-emphasized those themes Wednesday. "We have a moral obligation and a profound interest in helping lift the impoverished corners of the world," he said, pleading with world leaders to "do everything we can to realize the promise -- an achievable promise -- of the first AIDS-free generation. That is something that is possible if we feel a sufficient sense of urgency." Obama’s star may have dimmed a bit, but civil engineer Bernd Schneider, 63, still took the day off to come to Berlin from Leipzig, an hour south by train. Tight security means he never got close to the president. “I just wanted to see what all the fuss was about," Schneider told Yahoo News. “Obama is OK. I’m not really bothered by the [National Security Agency] snooping. I grew up in East Germany, and you just can’t compare it with the Stasi [or the Ministry for State Security, the former secret police of East Germany]. I guess if I send pictures of my vacation and say, ‘The weather was the bomb,’ I’m going to be scanned. But I don’t mind if it helps stop terrorism,” he said. “However, I’m pretty un-German about stuff like that.” Editor's note: Olivier Knox reported from Washington.
Clinton Marks Anniversary Of Berlin Airlift In A Speech In Germany, He Warned Against Being Complacent In A Time Of Relative World Peace.
By Jodi Enda, INQUIRER WASHINGTON BUREAU Posted: May 15, 1998
BERLIN — Confronted by the menace of a new Cold War-style arms race in Asia and resurgent right-wing activity in Germany, President Clinton used the 50th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift yesterday to underscore that America and its allies cannot risk complacency even in times of relative peace. ``For all the promise of our time, we are not free from peril,'' Clinton told a few thousand Germans who joined him on an airstrip to commemorate the rescue mission that put the United States and Germany on the path to friendship. ``That is why I hope both Americans and Germans will always remember the lesson of what happened here 50 years ago,'' he said. ``We cannot relinquish the responsibilities of leadership, for the struggle for freedom never ends.'' Half a century ago, when Joseph Stalin ordered Soviet troops to block all outside access to West Berlin, the United States embarked on a risky and untested venture to save the city's two million residents from starvation. President Harry S. Truman, determined that Stalin would not force the United States, Britain and France out of the Western enclave they created after World War II, quickly ordered military aircraft to fly in food and other vital supplies. In the 15 months that began June 26, 1948, U.S., British and French pilots flew more than 278,000 missions over East Germany and into the rubble that was West Berlin - and changed the course of the Cold War. During a cold and wet winter, the low-flying planes entered Berlin at the rate of one every three minutes, leaving behind coal, flour and other supplies and taking out sick people and children. Few thought the mission would succeed. But after not quite 11 months, the Soviet Union lifted the blockade, though the Western nations continued the airlift through September 1949 to ensure ample supplies. The airlift, which cost the lives of 78 airmen, 31 of them American, was a defining moment in postwar history. Not only did it save the tiny bastion of freedom surrounded by Soviet-occupied East Germany, it changed the relationship between the United States and what then was West Germany. U.S. soldiers who had been viewed as occupiers suddenly became protectors to a people struggling with the devastation of war and grappling with their nation's Nazi past. ``The Berlin population, but all other German citizens, too, learned what it meant not to be alone in the hour of need,'' German Chancellor Helmut Kohl said, as he stood beside Clinton at Tempelhof Airport, on one of the airstrips used during the rescue mission. ``We know that this city owes its survival and freedom during the Cold War to the firm resolve of the United States and our other Western allies.'' Now, Germany celebrates the airlift as an early but key step in its ultimate reunification less than eight years ago. Perhaps ironically, significant segments of this city - residents of the former Soviet-occupied East Berlin - sit on the sidelines now much as they did 50 years ago when they watched cargo planes fly past them to defy the blockade to the west. The emotional, if no longer physical, separation within this city of more than three million represents a small slice of a larger problem plaguing modern-day Germany. After the Soviets tore down the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the nation became one again, the east began a long, still unfinished climb to match the prosperity of the revitalized West. Now, the former East Germany's unemployment rate tops 20 percent, twice that of the western part of the country, and its residents receive lower wages than their western cousins. The economic problems in the east have been widely blamed for a rise in right-wing political activity and violence. Clinton, on the second day of his six-day European trip, made no mention of the neo-Nazism this nation is trying to contain, nor did he speak here of his own efforts to harness an arms race between India and Pakistan. As he spoke, however, two U.S. officials were on their way to Pakistan to try to persuade officials there not to reciprocate the five underground nuclear explosions detonated by India this week. Instead, the President talked of hope and heroes as he stood in front of one of the C-54 cargo planes used in the airlift and a much larger C-17 used more recently in Bosnia. Both planes were symbolically named the ``Spirit of Berlin.'' In an embarrassing moment, Clinton mistakenly referred to one of the heroes of the airlift, retired Col. Gail Halvorsen - who flew 126 flights and initiated the famous candy drops for children - as a woman. ``She is here with us today, and I'd like to ask her to stand,'' Clinton said. When he saw Halvorsen, who rose in his olive flight uniform, Clinton corrected himself. Halvorsen, now 77 and a resident of Provo, Utah, recalled that to the Berliners of 1948, ``freedom was more important than flour,'' which he carried in by the tons. Later in the day, Clinton flew to Eisenach, a hamlet in the former East Germany, where he acknowledged that ``efforts to unify and rebuild have not been easy.'' But he told several thousands in a picturesque village square that they could take pride in their General Motors Opel plant, which he said was a ``model for the entire world.'' In a discussion at the plant, established in 1991, Clinton praised workers for their spirit. The plant is said to be the most efficient automobile factory in Europe, producing a car in 20 hours, compared with the European production average of 36 hours per car. The General Motors subsidiary pumped $675 million into the plant, which now employs 1,980 and has indirectly caused 5,000 jobs to be created in the region. As Clinton made a pitch for Americans to invest in the former East Germany, he said that U.S. manufacturers ``are prepared to go anywhere there is a workforce that can be trained, where people will work hard in the kind of teamwork spirit that you have demonstrated here at this plant.''
Clinton Celebrates 50th Year Since Berlin Airlift
Europe: The help America gave Germany five decades ago has paid huge dividends, U.S. president says.
May 15, 1998|ELIZABETH SHOGREN | TIMES STAFF WRITER
BERLIN — President Clinton on Thursday honored the extraordinary relationship America had with the free half of the old divided Germany and then drew attention to the new U.S. role in helping to reunify one of Western Europe's largest nations. Starting his day at Berlin's Tempelhof Airport, Clinton celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift and the nearly 280,000 flights made by Allied planes--mostly American--to provide food and fuel in defiance of a Soviet blockade. "The most precious cargo did not come in the well-named care packages; it was the hope created by the constant roar of the planes overhead," Clinton said to the crowd, which included U.S. veterans of the airlift. "Berliners called this noise a symphony of freedom, reminding you that Berlin was not alone and that freedom was no flight of imagination." The assistance the United States gave Germany five decades ago has paid huge dividends in a long, stable relationship with a powerful partner, Clinton said. "That was the best investment we could have made in Germany's future," Clinton added. "It would be difficult to imagine a better friend or ally than modern Germany." Leaving the victories of the Cold War behind him, the president and his host, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, traveled to the former East German town of Eisenach, where General Motors built the Opel Eisenach plant in the early days of German reunification. The factory, which opened in 1992, employs 2,000 people and has been hailed as Europe's most efficient auto plant. There, Clinton was pressed about modern troubles, including the relative shortage of American financial investments to help eastern Germany emerge from its economic depression. "I hope that our coming here will help more of your fellow citizens to get good jobs" by sparking more American investments, Clinton told a few hundred workers at the plant. The only way that employment and living standards in eastern Germany and the rest of the former Soviet bloc will rise to Western levels, Clinton said, is through people "who believe in you and your potential investing their money and putting people to work." Their plant's success, Clinton said, shows the world that people "who have lived under a system of control and direction can live better as free people if given the opportunity." Clinton's dual focus--on America's Cold War victories with West Germany and the challenges facing the reunited Germany--highlighted the differences that exist between western and eastern Germans and their attitudes toward the U.S. Free tickets for the event at Tempelhof airfield were available in all 23 boroughs of Berlin: They were snapped up in the Western sector, but in the East there were few takers.
